diff --git a/cli/tests/input/unicode.xml b/cli/tests/input/unicode.xml
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..9cdb11559
--- /dev/null
+++ b/cli/tests/input/unicode.xml
@@ -0,0 +1,49 @@
+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
+<rfc category="info" docName="draft-sample-input-00"
+     ipr="trust200902" submissionType="IETF">
+  <front>
+    <title abbrev="Abbreviated Title">Put Your Internet Draft Title</title>
+
+    <author fullname="John Doe" initials="J." role="editor"
+            surname="Doe">
+      <organization abbrev="Company">Company</organization>
+
+       <address>
+        <postal>
+          <street></street>
+          <city>Springfield</city>
+          <region>IL</region>
+          <country>US</country>
+        </postal>
+
+        <email>jdoe@example.com</email>
+      </address>
+    </author>
+
+    <date month="December" year="2010" day="10"/>
+  
+    <abstract>
+      <t>Insert an abstract: MANDATORY. This template is for creating an
+      Internet-Draft.  With some out of scope characters
+      in Chinese, by Xing Xing, 这里是中文译本
+      </t>
+    </abstract>
+  </front>
+
+  <middle>
+    <section title="Some unicode strings">
+      <t>
+        Text body needs to deal with funny characters
+      </t>
+      <t>
+        Pure out of scope 这里是中文译本
+      </t>
+      <t>
+        Some re-mapped characters are ¢ or ©
+      </t>
+      <t>
+        More re-mapped characters are ˜ and €  and &#94;
+      </t>
+    </section>
+  </middle>
+</rfc>
diff --git a/cli/xml2rfc/utils.py b/cli/xml2rfc/utils.py
index 555b1af04..46a35a753 100644
--- a/cli/xml2rfc/utils.py
+++ b/cli/xml2rfc/utils.py
@@ -307,7 +307,7 @@ def _replace_unicode_characters(str):
         if match.group(1) in _unicode_replacements:
             str = re.sub(match.group(1), _unicode_replacements[match.group(1)], str)
         else:
-            entity = match.group(1).encode('ascii', 'xmlcharrefreplace')
+            entity = match.group(1).encode('ascii', 'xmlcharrefreplace').decode('ascii')
             str = re.sub(match.group(1), entity, str)
             xml2rfc.log.warn('Illegal character replaced in string: ' + entity)
 
diff --git a/cli/xml2rfc/writers/base.py b/cli/xml2rfc/writers/base.py
index e220fb60f..50c1949d0 100644
--- a/cli/xml2rfc/writers/base.py
+++ b/cli/xml2rfc/writers/base.py
@@ -1022,6 +1022,13 @@ def _build_index(self):
         self.eref_count = 0
         self.pis = self.xmlrfc.getpis()
 
+        # Abstract
+        abstract = self.r.find('front/abstract')
+        if abstract is not None:
+            self.write_heading('Abstract', autoAnchor='rfc.abstract')
+            for t in abstract.findall('t'):
+                self.write_t_rec(t)
+
         # Middle sections
         middle = self.r.find('middle')
         if middle is not None: